Features

The soon-to-retire Massachusetts congressman looks back on his three
decades in the House, recounting what it was like to come out to Tip O’Neill, how Newt Gingrich ruined Washington, and why Obama’s post-partisan dreams were delusions from the start. Interview by Jason Zengerle

John Friend was the charismatic leader of a feel-good, all-American yoga empire, 600,000 strong and counting. Then his disciples woke up one morning to discover that their guru smoked pot, had sex with his students, and
ran a Wiccan coven. “All my friends are gone,” he says. By Vanessa Grigoriadis